


a melody inside my head rings your name

by lovealwayskatie



Series: a melody inside my head [1]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Best Friends to Lovers, F/M, summer before college vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23780236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovealwayskatie/pseuds/lovealwayskatie
Summary: Was the kind of person she was waiting to fall madly, deeply, dizzily, Taylor Swift-album-worthy in love with the same boy who’d been here all along? / in which Ricky and Nini were just friends in high school
Relationships: Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Series: a melody inside my head [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749454
Comments: 32
Kudos: 147





	a melody inside my head rings your name

**Author's Note:**

> title is inspired by "melody" by jeremy zucker.
> 
> this is what happens when you get disney+ during quarantine and take a nose dive into hsmtmts.

“Congratulations, class of 2021. You did it,” she hears Principal Gutierrez say over the din of voices in the auditorium, and Nini, alongside her classmates, tosses her graduation cap in the air, watching the red and white tassel spin and blur, before she catches it.

And just like that, the crescendo of high school activities and plan-making and traditions comes to a final close. She’s done with high school, done with East High.

As the graduates begin to disperse to find their families, she turns, seeking her moms and lola in the crowd. She only makes it about three feet when she feels a pair of arms circle her from behind, crushing her in a hug.

“Sweet freedom,” the sneak attack hugger—Ricky, she recognizes, when she feels his chin rest on her shoulder—says, rocking back and forth, taking her with him as he does, and she laughs. He releases his hold on her and she turns to face him. His curls are mostly squashed under his grad cap, but a few strays have managed to escape.

“It really is a miracle that you made it through these four years in one piece,” she says, pulling a serious face. His mouth drops open in mock offense, and her resolve drops as she laughs.

“Nini!” She hears, and she turns to see her family waving. Her mom has her massive Canon camera hanging around her neck, and Nini sees at least a thirty-minute photoshoot in her future.

She looks back at Ricky and sees his dad, mom and his mom’s fiancé Todd approaching. The trio is still an odd sight to see together even two years after his parents finalized their divorce, and she knows that this is her cue to exit stage left.

“Find us outside, okay? My moms are going to want a picture of us.”

\---

Ashlyn throws a post-grad party in her basement that night for the theatre kids and company (Big Red, Kourtney, and Ricky being part of the designated company). It’s mostly lowkey, just the regular crew, and Carlos sets up Dance Dance Revolution in one corner while Gina holds court at the ping-pong table, serving Big Red overhand and watching as the plastic ball ricochets off his head. E.J., whose back from his first year at the University of Colorado, passes around cans of Natty Light, and Nini sips on the punch that Ashlyn made, part-vodka and part what tastes like melted watermelon Jolly Ranchers, out of a red solo cup.

Ricky settles next to her on the carpeted basement steps where she’s been watching her friends, on the fringe of the activity that’s laid out in front of them. His knee bumps against hers as he sits, and he watches her silently for a moment.

She tilts her head, one corner of her mouth turning upwards. “What?”

His eyebrows are drawn together, his forehead crinkled a little. “Trying to figure out what you’re thinking.”

She waits for him to continue since he’s almost right about whatever it is running through her mind. Nini considers both Kourtney and Ricky a best friend—each fills a slightly different role and serves as a different kind of confidant in her life. Kourtney is who she talks to about clothes and boys and fights with her moms that only a fellow teenage girl would understand and silly and not-so-silly insecurities, whereas growing up with Ricky by her side solidified a friendship rooted in shared histories, the way in which they know one another inside out. More than a best friend, he’s kind of her person.

“You don’t have to feel like it’s goodbye, you know,” he says finally. “There’s still the whole summer before that.”

She looks forward, hands on her knees, as she takes another look at her friends, all wrapped up in their own small worlds for the moment. She wishes that she could hate that he’s almost always right about what’s going on her in her head, but after thirteen years of friendship with Ricky Bowen, she had to get over that a long time ago.

“Yeah, I know,” she answers after an extended silence.

“Besides,” he continues, talking more to the Natty Light in his hands than to her. “It’s not like college means losing each other. You didn’t lose E.J. when he went to Boulder.” He traces the rim of the can with his thumb.

E.J. lets out a high-pitched yelp then, ducking down as a stray ping-pong ball narrowly misses hitting him.

“Yeah,” she echoes. They don’t speak for several moments until she adds, “I don’t want things to change, I guess.” But of course, she knows that they already have and will continue to barrel forward, whether she likes it or not.

Berklee College of Music is waiting for her at the end of August, on the opposite side of the country from her friends (including Ricky, who will be the furthest at UCLA) in a city she’s visited twice ever. She finds herself second guessing her decision on a weekly basis but as her moms, lola, Kourtney and even Ricky continue to remind her: you can’t say no to Berklee. It’s a chance for her to develop as a serious singer-songwriter and hone her craft.

“Well, things won’t change with us. Promise.” He holds out a pinky to her to reiterate his point, and she smiles, shakes her head at him but loops her pinky around his anyways.

\---

Summer arrives, and Nini drags her friends around Salt Lake City, checking off the pages of to-dos she’d been compiling in her notebook over the last months: late-night diner runs, afternoons spent in E.J.’s pool, karaoke, game nights in Big Red’s basement.

(She has a separate list for college prep—packing up her clothes, ordering her textbooks, tracking down twin XL bedding for her dorm. She doesn’t touch that list yet.)

It’s June and Nini hosts a musical movie night in her living room, making four different kinds of popcorn including caramel-covered and the kind with garlic salt that Ricky loves, and her friends pile in, Kourtney sitting cross-legged at her feet and Carlos pressed against her side as they squeeze five on a couch meant for three.

They sing along to Mamma Mia and Grease, and as the night gets later and the credits roll on their third movie of the night, Hairspray, people start to peel off, heading home for the night until Ricky is the last one left.

“Do you want to watch another one? It doesn’t have to be a musical,” she adds quickly. He’s a good sport for the group but musicals aren’t really his thing.

Ricky flops on the couch next to her and holds out his hand for the remote. “I know what we’re going to watch.” She raises an eyebrow at him but relents and watches as he flips through the options on Netflix before selecting The Greatest Showman.

“Wow. Is this character growth?” she asks teasingly as the opening scene begins to roll.

He settles deeper into his spot on the couch, stuffing a handful of popcorn in his mouth before mumbling, “Maybe.”

But when the notes of the first song begin to play, he blurts out, “Okay, but _why_ would they start singing _now_?”

She elbows him in the side, accompanied by a “Shut _up_ , Ricky”, and he gasps in offense, placing the bowl of popcorn to the coffee table before reaching for one of the throw pillows tucked behind him.

“No, no, no,” she rushes out as she realizes what’s coming, scrambling for safety on the opposite side of the couch.

Before she can get too far, he thwacks her in the face with the pillow. She reaches out blindly, trying to grab hold of the attack object and pushes back, flattening Ricky onto his back and, as they both grasp onto the pillow in their hands, unwillingly takes herself with him. She winds up halfway on top of Ricky, the pillow sandwiched between them, her feet pressed against his calf.

Briefly, an acknowledgement of just how close they are, how deep brown his eyes are, how soft his hair looks, flits through her mind.

Ricky was her first kiss. They were thirteen, and she was mostly looking to get it over with before starting high school. The quick, simple kiss in her backyard treehouse was exchanged more like a business transaction than a big, romantic moment.

Their relationship was never really like that—at least, not mostly. They had never kissed again despite Carlos swearing up and down that the pair had chemistry, and sure, she wasn’t oblivious to the fact that he was a cute guy. But Ricky dated a handful of girls in three month rotations in high school, and she herself had dated E.J. for half of junior year, a true showmance in every sense of the word, when they played opposite one another in The Music Man, before settling that they were better as friends. Throughout, Ricky and Nini has remained strictly friends, albeit homecoming and senior prom dates when not attached to someone else.

Still, she finds herself motionless in this moment. Ricky stares up her like he’s taking her in, trying to memorize her, and the weight of his expression would almost make her shiver if she weren’t doing the exact same thing—from the two loose curls that fell over his forehead to his unfairly long dark eyelashes to the small freckle on his chin.

And later, if she were to ever talk about this with Kourtney or anyone ever, she would call it a lapse in judgement or an accident or maybe plead insanity, because, and she’s not sure who moves first, after an excruciating eight beats of silence, a full meter, Ricky pushes up and she leans forward, closing the gap between them, and they’re kissing.

And they keep kissing as they sit up, grappling for better access to one another, Ricky pulling the pillow from between them and throwing it aside, his hands snaking around her waist to pull her closer and hers cradling his face.

And they keep kissing even as her mind spins, panic creeping into her brain, because you don’t go around kissing your best friend except that’s exactly what she’s doing, and it feels like she’s forgotten how to do anything else.

And they keep kissing until they don’t; when he pulls away, his expression a mixture of surprise and confusion and what she thinks might be adoration. His lips are swollen, and his pupils are wide, and his hair is sticking up in the back, and she can’t even fathom what her own expression looks like right now, but her heart clenches at the sight of him.

“So,” he finally breaks the silence. “I should . . .” He searches her face—for what, she doesn’t know but he seems to find his answer. Sounding vaguely panic stricken, he says, “Go. I should go.”

He edges away from her and grabs his jacket that’s draped over the arm of the couch and begins putting it on. She doesn’t move from her seat, feeling frozen in place by the sudden loss in contact, and watches as he turns back to her, shoulders tense and hands shoved in his pockets. He stands there for an extra beat, just looking at her, then nods once. “Right. Bye.”

She waves dumbly. “Bye.” And with that, he turns and leaves, closing the door firmly behind him.

\---

The next morning, she texts him and asks to talk, which is how she ends up waiting for him in her treehouse, tugging nervously on the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

After he left last night, Nini walked laps around her room for hours, feeling dizzy, replaying the scene in her head over and over, every so often catching herself touching her lips as if she could still feel the sensation of being kissed by her best friend. She’d never been kissed like that before, but now that she had, it was unlikely that she’d be able to forget, much less forget that the kiss had been with Ricky. Could it have always been like that? Should it have been?

She hears a knock on the exterior of the tree house and his voice announce, “Coming up,” before he climbs through the entrance in the floor. Purposefully avoiding eye contact as he does, he mimics her position, cross-legged against an opposite wall of the house.

When he does look at her, his eyebrows shoot up. “Nice sweatshirt.”

“Thanks,” she says, tugging on the sleeve once more, before following his gaze. Right. The sweatshirt’s his. Totally doesn’t make this any less awkward.

He doesn’t look dissimilar to a skittish animal, his eyes wide as he continues to look everywhere but at her, and he’s drumming his fingers against his thighs, which is the most classic of Ricky Bowen’s nervous ticks.

In an attempt to propel this conversation forward, she says, “So, last night was—”

“I really shouldn’t have kissed you out of the blue like that—”

“I mean—”

“And I hope you don’t think that I’ve just been waiting around to like . . . jump you or something, because I _haven’t_ —”

“I don’t think—”

“And we can pretend that it never—”

“I kissed you, too,” she says, louder this time in order to actually _get a word in_ , and Ricky snaps his mouth shut, which she takes as the chance to keep going. “Or I kissed back. Or first, I’m not really sure where we ended up landing on that part, but I was there and I kissed you, too.”

“Right.” He’s wrapped his arms around his legs now, hugging his knees close, and he looks incredibly boyish this way, messy hair and wide brown eyes. “So. Thoughts?”

“What, do you want like, a star rating?”

He rolls his eyes. “God, Nini, no.”

“Okay, well!” She says, a blush creeping up her neck. This is not where she thought this conversation was going to go and she’s not sure how to course correct. She flails a hand helplessly in his general direction, searching for the words in his blank expression. “You were there. It was nice.”

“Nice?”

“Good.” She remembers the way that her heart had swelled last night then deflated like a sad balloon after he bolted. “Great.”

“Great,” he repeats dumbly, and this time, Nini is the one to shut up. He drags a hand through his hair, stretching out his legs so his Vans are parallel to her Keds. Then he exhales loudly. “I’d thought about kissing you for a really long time.”

“You had?” she squeaks, and her heart squeezes in her chest.

He settles her with a look like it’s been the most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah. Of course, I had.” She tries to scrub her memory for all the times they’d been alone or close or any other indication of when he’d apparently wanted to kiss her, and she’d just been oblivious. After her last performance as Nellie in South Pacific, when he’d showed up with flowers and hugged her so tightly that it felt like he’d never let go. Ashlyn’s New Year’s Eve party when they loitered next to the bowl of pretzels together during the countdown to midnight. Slow dancing at senior prom to the new Ed Sheeran single when she momentarily thought he’d been staring at her lips before the song ended, abruptly switching to Megan Thee Stallion.

She smiles at her lap until he asks, “What now?”

The question throws her. _What now?_ She had a laundry list of nows on her plate at the moment, most notably, the scariest and most looming inevitable that was college, and having feelings for her best friend of thirteen years hadn’t been among them.

“I . . . I don’t know.”

He reframes the question more directly, “What do you want to do?” Then as if to emphasize his point, he knocks his left foot against her right, giving her a small smile.

“I . . . “

In rapid succession, the words August, Berklee, Boston, college, and future flash through her mind, but the open, earnest look on Ricky’s face squashes those thoughts in one swoop. Instead she pushes herself onto her knees and crawls closer to Ricky, her best friend, her person. He looks at her, it almost feels like through her really, and she places one hand on his cheek. She’s not sure if he realizes but he leans into her touch, and that’s all the reassurance she needs before leaning forward and kissing him softly.

And for now, him, her, them—this feels like the right answer.

\---

Theoretically, she knows that the Earth is still spinning, both around itself and the sun, and the seasons haven’t changed, and the concept of time remains. Yet, she can’t shake the feeling that her entire universe has shifted.

They don’t tell their friends right away, because well, their friends are a lot. Like a lot, times a thousand, and they need a second to figure it all out first before willingly walking under a microscope. But even as they agree to this in the treehouse, shoulder to shoulder, Nini playing with Ricky’s fingers in her lap, she can’t fathom how she’ll last too long without telling Kourtney, or how long Ricky can last without telling Big Red, for that matter.

He asks her to hang out that night, and after saying that she’d love to, she asks if it’s a date, wincing at her words after they leave her mouth, but he nods, eager, a grin breaking his face wide open. “Yes, definitely a date.”

They go bowling, and she crushes him handedly in all three games, her fist pumping evolving into a full on, potentially ever-so-slightly over-the-top victory dance after each strike she bowls, and Ricky shakes his head at her. Afterwards, they eat nachos from the bar, and he winds up with fake cheese all over his mouth, and honestly, a date with Ricky is like any other time they hang out.

Well, mostly.

Afterwards, when he’s driving her home, he pulls over a few houses down from hers, and before she can ask why, he kisses her and her stomach flips. He tugs her closer and closer until she crawls over the center console and settles in his lap. He kisses her eagerly, greedily, tasting like bowling alley nachos, and her heart thuds erratically in her chest. Her arms are loosely around his neck, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, while his are at the small of her back, keeping her close, and he opens his mouth a little more against hers.

She recalls his comment from earlier today in the treehouse. “What happened to not waiting around all this time to jump me?” she mumbles, grinning against his mouth.

“Lies,” he replies in between kisses. “I’m such a liar.”

She laughs, breaking their kiss, and he exhales shakily, dropping his forehead to rest on her shoulder. They stay like that for several moments longer before she pats him on the shoulder and climbs off his lap.

“Okay, lover boy,” she teases, buckling her seatbelt again. “Time to take me home.”

\---

That night, she lays in bed and stares at the glow-in-the-dark sticker stars on her ceiling, letting her mind run through snippets of the day again and again and again in order to commit it all to memory. She doesn’t want any of it to slip away.

Dating E.J. had felt like what she imagined being a normal person dating a celebrity was like. He was universally loved at East High: part of the water polo team, uber talented and the lead in every musical, vice president of the senior class. Holding hands in the cafeteria felt like walking the red carpet at a movie premiere; when he posted pictures of them on Instagram, he racked up twice as many likes as she had total followers. And even more than that, he believed in her and her talent, encouraged and celebrated her success in the East High drama department. That meant a lot to her, that he saw that in her even when she’d only been the back end of a cow.

But it never felt like any more than that—not like the love described in movies or books or the second act ballad between the leading romantic pairing that all great musicals had. No heart swelling, spine tingling, stomach swooping, mind spinning kind of love.

She’s always cared so deeply for Ricky, truly, as one of her closest friends. She showed the first song she ever wrote, three chords and just a chorus of lyrics about the bunny-shaped cloud she’d seen that day, only to him. When he got his wisdom teeth taken out, she made a week’s worth of strawberry Jell-O and watched all the Avengers movies until he nodded off in a pain medication-induced sleep. She hugged him tightly the first, fifth, and final time that his parents had a massive, smackdown, drag out, blow out before officially separating.

Was the kind of person she was waiting to fall madly, deeply, dizzily, Taylor Swift-album-worthy in love with the same boy who’d been here all along?

She curls onto her side, pulling her duvet tighter. If she’s honest with herself, she knows that she’s half in love with him already.

\---

Kourtney has a summer job at the makeup counter at Sephora, so Nini pretends like she’s highly considering purchasing purple lipstick and an $80 eyeshadow palette to hang out with her.

“I got my roommate assignment this morning,” Kourtney says. “Alyssa from El Paso, Texas. Education major. We scheduled a FaceTime call for tonight.”

“Ooh, I want to hear all about it after,” she replies, studying an eyeliner pencil intently. “I’m sure she’ll be nice.”

Kourtney’s organizing the lipstick display by brand, then by finish and then color. “I just hope she’s on board with the color scheme that I picked out for our room.”

“I’m sure she will be,” Nini answers. “I haven’t even thought about any of that yet.”

“Well, not everyone is dreading leaving for college as much as you, Ni,” Kourtney replies, and even though her tone has a teasing edge, she doesn’t sound unserious.

Nini gapes at her. “I am not _dreading_ —” She stops when her friend cuts her a look. She’s not dreading it. She just might not be as excited as everyone else to leave her family, her friends, and the only life she’s ever known. Is that such a crime?

“I, for one, can’t wait to get out of here,” Kourtney continues, sliding a lipstick tube into its new slot amongst the other shades of pink. She spares a glance at her friend and corrects herself quickly when seeing the wounded look on her face. “Not to get away from you guys—for more freedom, fashion merchandising classes, college boys.” She waggles her eyebrows at that, and a tube of mascara slips out of Nini’s hand, clattering on the tile floor.

“Sorry,” she rushes, picking it up and pushing it into Kourtney’s hands. To exacerbate the situation, her phone vibrates then with a text from the only soon-to-be college boy on her mind these days, but she doesn’t reach for her phone.

Kourtney eyes her with mild concern and places the mascara back in its rightful place. “When are you supposed to find out who your roommate is?”

“Um,” she hums. “Not sure. Late July, I think.” And then, attempting to change the subject once and for all, she holds up the first product she sees. “Do you think I could pull off blue eyeliner?”

\---

The gang gets together at their favorite, Cat’s Cradle Diner, commandeering their usual table in the back, and Nini ends up sipping her Elvis milkshake sandwiched in between Ricky and Big Red.

She’s listening to Carlos and Gina strategizing about the upcoming fall musical, Anything Goes, mapping out the big tap number on paper napkins, and once again feels a sense of calm settle over her, knowing that the theatre department has been left in good hands next year, when she feels Ricky’s hand on her knee.

They might have agreed to not tell their friends yet, but she has since learned that does not equate to Ricky agreeing to not touch her in front of them, evident now as he slides his hand further and further up her leg.

“Now the question is, what do you think the ship is going to look like?” Carlos asks, and Ricky draws a looping figure 8 on her thigh.

“So, I was talking about this with Miss Jenn,” Gina says, looking around for a napkin not already covered in blocking ideas, and Nini slides over hers.

His hand reaches a spot on her thigh that causes her to shiver, and she jumps at his touch, banging both knees on the underside of the table. She briefly catches the sight of Ricky’s shit-eating grin before Big Red gives her a wary look. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she answers quickly. “You know when you get one of those full body chills?”

He nods very solemnly. “Totally.”

\---

She tells her moms. She already feels terrible enough lying to all her friends, and it’s not like they’re going to tell anybody.

Besides, they adore Ricky. They get him a new knit sweater every year for Christmas and let him spend nights on their couch during the early days of his parents’ separation and even have a framed picture of the duo from Halloween 2010 when they went as ketchup and mustard. So, she suspects that they’ll be pretty excited.

They pretend to act shocked for half a second before fessing up to seeing them kiss goodnight on the porch after their third date, and Nini just rolls her eyes.

\---

He’s sprawled across her bed one night, his arms stretched out, head hanging over the side, his grin upside down as he smiles at her from her spot in her egg chair. She’s strumming lazily on her ukulele, and he asks, “Do you take requests?”

She strums once. “Maybe. What were you thinking?”

He rolls over and his hair looks particularly floppy today, she notes. “Carole?” he asks.

She smiles. Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift are her big trifecta when it comes to female singer-songwriters. She’s collected all their albums, run through all their lyrics, and etched them into her mind. It’s kind of dumb, but she feels like she knows them personally because their highs and lows, hopes and dreams are all right there on the page for the whole world to see. That’s the kind of music that she wants to create.

She checks that her fingers are on the correct first chord then begins to play.

_One fine day, you'll look at me_

_And you will know our love was meant to be_

_One fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl_

_The arms I long for will open wide_

_And you'll be proud to have me right by your side_

_One fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl_

As she sings, he continues to watch her, chin propped up in his hands, a small smile toying at his lips, and when she plays the last chord, letting it ring, fade, and then silence. “Play another one,” he urges her, so she does, this time a Joni song.

He told her once that she could sing the phonebook and it would still be great, a compliment that she’d brushed off at the time as him being overly indulgent, but now she thinks that if he asked her to play the phonebook, she would for him.

\---

E.J. invites everyone over for a pool party, and it’s only been two weeks since she hosted her movie night, but that’s basically a decade in summer time.

She brings sliced watermelon and works exponentially hard to avoid staring when Ricky pulls off his shirt before cannonballing into the deep end of the pool. She lays out with Carlos and Gina on the lounge chairs, working on their tans and sipping pink lemonade, as the latter tells them all about the kids’ dance classes she’s been teaching over the summer. She’s going to miss these two so much but knows that they’re buzzing with excitement for their own senior years.

She winds up in the pool when they pair off for a game of chicken, Seb and Gina versus Ricky and herself. When she’s balanced on his shoulders, he holds onto her ankles tightly, rubbing light circles with his thumb below her ankle bone. It’s kind of incredibly distracting, and she’s not really surprised when Gina manages to upset her balance, sending her into the water.

Chicken devolves into a diving contest in which Big Red accidentally belly flops on his attempt and Carlos wins after he grand jetés into a smooth swan dive.

They break for lunch at some point, ordering a bunch of pizzas, and after he climbs out of the pool and shoves a slice of watermelon in his mouth, Ricky shakes his head like he’s an overgrown golden retriever, sending water droplets flying in her direction. She rolls her eyes when he settles into the chair next to her, but he just grins, watermelon juice dripping down his chin.

\---

They never have a big, serious conversation defining their relationship, because going from childhood best friends to more than kind of cuts out any pretense of being casual.

Nini never considered herself to be the most physically affection person out there—her love languages are technically words of affirmation and acts of service, which frequently takes the form of baked goods and handwritten notes.

But Ricky slips in easy, affectionate touches, like using her hand or shoulder or thigh as his newest drum set as he lightly taps his fingers to whatever rhythm is running through his head that day, intertwining their hands every chance he gets, fiddling with the ends of her hair when they’re watching Brooklyn 99 on the couch.

She tries to consider if it ever feels weird, being with him in this new way, mulls it over in her mind late at night, but the fact of the matter is that it’s easy, really, being with him. Maybe they’re now in the place where they were supposed to be all along.

(They’re at Starbucks when he refers to her as his girlfriend for the first time, three weeks in, and his eyes widen in mild panic before she beams up at him reassuringly.)

\---

One night, they go to the drive-in movie half an hour outside of Salt Lake City to watch the newest Spiderman movie. She packs them snacks, popcorn and candy (Reese’s Pieces for him, Sour Patch Kids for her) and soda, and he piles up his trunk with pillows and blankets for them to watch from the back of his VW Bug.

The sun has set low behind them, painting the sky in oranges and pinks, when the previews start and Nini rests her chin on his shoulder and sings quietly, “Stranded at the drive-in, branded a fool.”

Ricky shakes his head. “No. No, no Grease references right now.”

She smiles, loves that the number of times he’s begrudgingly sat through the film has seared itself into his brain, and keeps singing, “What will they say Monday at school?” He kisses her, presumably to shut her up, and when he pulls away, he keeps an arm draped over her shoulders and tells her to pay attention to Tom Holland.

\---

The Caswells throw an annual Fourth of July barbeque, grilling enough hot dogs and burgers to feed a small army, burning through sparklers before everyone climbs up onto their roof to watch the city-ordained fireworks display. Their neighborhood has one of the best views in town.

This year, it’s also the setting where Ricky and Nini’s secret blows up in their faces by none other than Natalie Bagley when she opens her mouth and says, “Nini, do you have a _hickey_?”

She freezes with a bag of hotdog buns in hand, and she’s fairly certain that her brain has short circuited given that, when she opens her mouth to respond, nothing comes out.

Her friends gape at her, and she briefly spares what she hopes is an inconspicuous glance at Ricky, who’s been playing cornhole with Seb and currently looks like a literal deer in headlights. Mr. Caswell is still grilling, whistling along obliviously to the Bruce Springsteen song that floats through the speakers, _thank God._

“No,” Kourtney cuts in loudly. “I burned her curling her hair last week. What can I say? I’m a pro with winged eyeliner, not a curling wand.” She walks over to Nini quickly, grabbing onto her wrist and starting to pull her towards the house. “We should probably put some more aloe vera on that,” she calls over her shoulder like an afterthought.

Once she’s been dragged inside the house, she starts to thank her, but Kourtney pushes aside her hair, forcibly tilts her head to and says low under her breath as she examines the mark, “Girl, that is a hickey.” Her friend drops her hair, letting it fall back and hide Ricky’s handiwork. “Who the hell is giving you a hickey?”

Nini blinks, racks her brain for an answer.

Nope. Still short circuited.

So instead she answers honestly. “Ricky.”

“Ricky?”

“Yeah, we’ve kind of been—”

“Hooking up?”

“ _Seeing_ each other,” she corrects. “Like, dating. We’ve been testing it out the last few weeks, and obviously—” She gestures to Kourtney, who she has never seen truly speechless yet whose mouth currently hangs open. “It’s pretty shocking news, so we wanted to wait to tell everyone until we knew it was going to . . . stick.”

“Don’t think you need to worry about it not sticking,” Kourtney says dryly. “Boy did a number on you.”

Kourtney reaches to move her hair and take another look, but Nini swats her hand away. “Stop it, this isn’t about the hickey.”

“I mean, it’s kind of about the hickey.”

“We were—are—going to tell everyone soon,” she says. She doesn’t want Kourtney to be mad at her. “But if you could just, not tell anyone for a little bit? I want Ricky to be able to tell Big Red himself.”

Her friend sighs, letting her shoulders drop. “I won’t tell,” she promises. “And I get it, waiting to tell everyone for a bit. Carlos will probably cry.” Nini laughs, and Kourtney continues, “Besides, it won’t be too big of a shock. Ricky’s always looked at you like you invented mint chocolate chip ice cream and the half pipe and Mario Kart. All in one day. Now, come on.” She tugs on Nini. “We need to figure out how to hide your Ricky hickey.”

After she tells him that Kourtney knows, Ricky tells Big Red, who actually cries—tears of joy, he swears—and she catches Big Red stealing glances at them later when they’re watching the fireworks together on the roof, sitting side by side.

They end up telling the rest of their friends two days later in their group chat. Rip off the Band-Aid, Ricky says. Within seconds, there’s a flurry of exclamation points and heart emojis and Carlos responds with a series of RuPaul’s Drag Race gifs of contestants gasping in the workroom, snapping excitedly, and a queen dropping into the splits.

\---

For Gina’s birthday, they go to a skating rink with a disco ball and eighties music on a loop, and Ashlyn brings a sheet cake with a picture of Gina’s face laser printed on it.

As the resident skater boy, Ricky spins in circles around their friends, and he sings along to every song: “Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard.”

They’ve always leaned on one another for the serious things—divorcing parents, homophobic bigots, typical high school jerks—but she decides that she likes his goofy charm and quiet confidence most of all as she watches him skate backwards, belting, “Their shadows searching in the _ni-i-ight_.”

In his next lap around the rink, still backwards, he grabs onto her hand and pulls her along, the moving lights casting rainbows across his face as he sings to her.

“Alright, who wants to eat my face?” Gina calls from the table that they claimed as theirs, piled with all their belongings.

Ricky tugs on her hand once more, pulling her in the direction of sugar, and she gladly follows.

\---

College has been an off-limits topic between them, given the attached, unspoken question of what’s going to happen to them once it can’t be put off any longer.

She was already nervous about leaving him behind as a friend but now . . . Can she really expect them to dive head first into long distance after two months of dating? She might let herself live in the hopeless romantic corners of her brain more often than not, but she isn’t completely unrealistic. And she can’t stand the idea that they attempt long distance and promptly fizzle out like most high school couples, effectively screwing up their friendship in the process.

Not that they technically _count_ as a high school couple. But still, you get what she means.

They’re at Target, picking up snacks before meeting their friends at the park for the free concert series hosted each Thursday afternoon. Or Nini picks up snacks while Ricky plays in the aisles, taking running head starts before jumping onto the foot holds of the cart, zooming past her and the selection of pretzels she’s deciding between.

When she’s made their (her) selections, they head back to the checkout, passing the dedicated Back to School: College aisles, brimming with bedding and shower caddies and school supplies.

“Oh, God, I’m going to have to come back here with my dad. I’ve gotten nothing for my dorm yet,” he says. “I’m pretty sure my mom thinks I’m going to show up to school with a toothbrush and nothing else.”

She tries to laugh at that, but it comes off sounding hollow as she steers them towards the register.

“What about you? Are you secretly already packed and ready to go?” he asks, and one of the wheels on their cart squeaks as they get in line.

She grips on tighter to the handlebar. “Nope, can’t say I’m packed and ready to go.”

\---

July stretches on, and a summer storm drives Ricky and Nini inside one day. With her moms at work, they have the house to themselves for the afternoon. As rain falls in fat drops, drumming loudly against the windows, they finish a third episode of The Office, curled on the couch under the fluffiest blanket she could find, and she announces that she wants to make brownies.

She drags him into the kitchen and puts him in charge of cracking eggs and measuring flour while she preheats the oven and works on mixing the rest of the ingredients.

“Watch this,” he says, and she watches him crack an egg, one-handed, in a single, easy motion. “Master Chef,” he says in way of an explanation, tilting his chin up. She smiles, mostly at how proud of himself he seems and a touch actually impressed.

Baking with Ricky is a bit messier than expected, though, as he overfills the bowl before turning on the stand mixer, sending a puff of flour across the kitchen counter and coating his hair, and he keeps sneaking bits of batter.

“We’re going to end up with none left for brownies,” she says.

He has two fingers shoved in his mouth and in response, moans low in the back of his throat as he licks his hand clean. The sound makes her stomach flip, and she has to look away.

“Here,” he says, swiping his pointer finger through the batter again before holding it out to her.

She opens her mouth to tell him no, that raw eggs can give you salmonella, but the flour has dusted the tips of his curls gray, and she presses her lips together before licking the brownie batter off his finger. The action feels weirdly intimate, and she peers up at him through her eyelashes. “It’s good,” she concedes lowly.

His thumb brushes against her cheek before he kisses her, and the cold granite counter top digs in her back as they kiss, and he tastes like batter. Or maybe she does, she’s not really sure. She’s not really sure of anything other than that kissing Ricky feels like nothing else in the world.

He deepens the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and this time, she’s the one that lets out a low groan. Toying with the hem of his T-shirt, she slips her hands under to lay her palms flat on the planes of his back. When she’s alone, away from him and able to think clearly, it kind of freaks her out how desperate she feels when she’s with him, always trying to get him closer and kiss him harder, the dizzying and overwhelming feeling that burns her up like a match. And it’s not like they’ve even be together like this that long, but she feels like her heart might explode—both if she keeps kissing him and if she stops. He runs his hands up and down her sides, slowing to kiss her languidly, teasingly, and no one’s going to be home anytime soon, to stop them from being like this for hours.

Except the oven timer dings then, signaling that it’s reached 350 degrees, and they break apart. “Brownies,” she says, breathless, her knuckles white from how tightly she’s gripping the edge of the counter behind her.

“Brownies,” he repeats.

Later, when the brownies are done and cut into squares, they’re back on the couch, eating them off napkins with glasses of milk, watching Jim Halpert encase a stapler in Jell-O as the rain continues to fall outside.

\---

One day, they pile into E.J. and Seb’s cars and make the hour drive to the Great Rapids Water Park. They ride the log flume and race each other down slides and float down the lazy river in colorful innertubes.

Carlos threatens anyone who tries to get his hair wet within an inch of their life, and they eat chicken tenders with pruney fingers for lunch, and no matter how much she reapplies her SPF 60, Ashlyn’s cheeks and shoulders are pink from the sun before they leave.

On the drive home in Seb’s car, they sing along to Elton John, dancing in their seats, and Ricky bumps his shoulder against hers as he sings, “Oh, lawdy, mama, those Friday nights when Suzie wore her dresses tight, and the crocodile rocking was _o-o-out of si-i-i-ight_.”

It’s one of the most fun days she’s had in a long time, and she wishes that days could be like pictures, able to be framed and kept on her bedside table forever.

\---

“So, you and Ricky,” E.J. says one night. They’re in his kitchen, getting more snacks and sodas before rejoining their friends in the living room before The Voice is back from commercial. “It makes so much sense.”

She’s at the fridge with two cans of Coke and one of orange soda tucked in the crook of her elbow. After she and E.J. decided to just be friends after winter break last year, it was a little awkward for a bit, but that dissipated soon enough. She’d justified it to death at the time, why she wasn’t more upset about the end of her first relationship—he was a great guy but not the right guy for her, they were still friends and part of the same friend group, he was going to college next year anyway. Now, when she compares that time to being with Ricky now, it all makes a lot more sense, a deep shift in her perspective.

“Thanks, I think.” She’s not sure if she should thank someone for a compliment when it’s about her making up one half of a well-suited couple, something she can’t even control. Before she closes the fridge, she pauses and grabs a third Coke for Ricky.

“I mean that in a good way,” he says sincerely, his eyes adopting what they’ve deemed his Big Brother Look, when he gets all older and wiser, philosophical and protective. “You guys work, you always have.” He dumps what’s left in the bag of Doritos into the bowl and asks, “You’re going to try out long distance, yeah?”

Arms full, she nudges the fridge closed with her shoulder. “Um, I—we haven’t really talked about it.”

He tilts his head. “Really?”

She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head. “Nope.”

“The show is back!” Carlos’s voice rings out from the living room, and she takes the chance to exit this conversation immediately.

“Here,” she says, reclaiming her seat on the arm of the couch next to Ricky, and holds out the can of soda.

“Oh,” he says surprised and accepts it gratefully before pulling her onto the couch next to him, letting her fold her legs into his lap, drumming his fingers lightly on her calf and shaking his head when the contestant elects to be on John Legend’s team over Kelly Clarkson’s.

\---

All the girls have a sleepover at Ashlyn’s, taking over the living room with mounds of pillows and blankets, supplies for pedicures, and three different kinds of pizzas.

Ashlyn is painting Nini’s toenails with a mint polish when her phone screen lights up. Ricky’s in Chicago for the week with his mom and Todd for their annual “bonding excursion”—air quotes his, not hers—and has been sending her regular updates. She knows that his mom leaving Utah was hard on him—she practically lived it with him—but the way in which she moved on so quickly with another man stung even worse, and these trips typically leave him surly and desperate to return to Salt Lake as quickly as possible. But she knows that he misses his mom, achingly so, and that it’s good for them to spend the time, and he sends her pictures from the Bean and the Skydeck and Wrigley Park, a hot dog piled with toppings in his hand.

“Ooh,” Ashlyn coos when Nini opens his message, telling her to have fun tonight, alongside a photo of a slice of deep-dish pepperoni pizza. “Is that Ricky?”

She locks her phone and turns it over, screen down. “Yeah, he’s still in Chicago.”

“How’s that going?” Gina asks from her seat on the couch, and she knows that she means her relationship, not Ricky’s trip.

After their friends found out about them being together, the girls grilled her about all the details, making her start from the beginning, in a back-corner booth at the Cat’s Cradle Diner over milkshakes and fries. They oohed and awed at all the right places, asked all the right questions, and it felt so good, a weight lifting from her shoulders, to finally be able to talk about it with others, dissecting every detail. Since then, however, it’s mostly been business as usual, save an uptick in knowing looks exchanged anytime Nini’s phone lights up.

“He’s behaving himself, right?” Kourtney jumps in to ask with a raised eyebrow.

“I—yeah, it’s good. Really good,” Nini admits with a smile. “We were already so close, so it hasn’t been that different, really.”

“Except now you guys can openly paw at each other.”

Her jaw drops. “We don’t—”

Kourtney says, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Sort of.” She tilts her head, clearly remembering the Independence Day Ricky Hickey Extravaganza. They’d ended up going through three ice cubes, tinted lip balm and setting powder before agreeing that Nini was presentable. “Ricky is definitely pawing.”

“Can we stop saying ‘pawing’ now?” she asks, kind of to no one, kind of to everyone.

Ashlyn starts painting the second coat of polish on her left foot. “So, you guys haven’t like . . .” She looks up at her expectantly.

The silence that follows is deafening as she feels all eyes on her and she’s trying very hard not to visualize a neon _SEX_ sign hanging over her head. They know she hasn’t—or _knew_ she hadn’t, not with E.J. anyway. They were never that serious. “Um,” she answers finally. “No. We haven’t.”

“Not yet,” Gina quips.

“Not yet,” Nini echoes before what she’s saying registers in her brain.

Ashlyn leans forward at this. “But you think you will—with Ricky?”

There’s an itchy sensation crawling up her neck, and she directs her attention at a loose thread of the blanket beside her. It’s not like she hasn’t thought about this once or twice or a thousand times recently. Their relationship kind of feels like it’s been in warp speed, and she’s not sure if it’s because it’s summer or because they skipped over the early getting to know you stages of a relationship or because of the looming expiration date approximately a month away. But it’s not like she’s been doing anything to slow things down either.

“I don’t know,” she finally answers. “I guess, yeah, some day. I trust him and, uh, I already know he’s special, so . . .” Her voice trails off.

“That makes sense,” Ashlyn replies, seemingly satisfied with that answer. She finishes up with Nini’s pinky toe and closes the cap on the nail polish she’s been using. She pats Nini’s knee swiftly. “Now don’t mess up your toes. Gina, you’re next!”

\---

They’re in his room, and his dad is gone, on a date, and they’re on his bed, his hands framing her face, holding himself over her as they kiss. Her mind feels hazy, but her body appears to have no problem taking over as her hands skitter from his jaw to his hair to the bottom of his shirt, tugging until Ricky breaks their kiss to let her pull it up and over his head.

Now that she has more Ricky real estate, she drags her fingertips down his chest, and he groans into the spot of her neck that he’s been working on, and she got her roommate for Berklee today, and really, they should probably stop.

(Her roommate is a girl named Lara from outside D.C., and she plays the violin. They exchanged numbers, texting a little, agreeing to split the cost of a Micro Fridge for the room, and followed one another on Instagram. She seems cool enough based on her pictures; she likes to go hiking and has a Border Collie and a younger sister and drinks a lot of Boba tea.)

She pushes on his shoulders and blurts out, “I’m not going to have sex with you right now.”

Ricky pulls back like he’s been burned and blinks twice. He has her Chapstick on his mouth. “I—I didn’t realize that was on the table?” He asks with a tilt of his head.

“Um,” is all she says.

He rolls off her and moves to sit at the edge of his bed, putting his shirt back on. She sits up and scoots closer.

“So, I, um,” she starts. “I just didn’t want you to get the impression that—”

“I didn’t.”

“Because I really like you. That’s kind of the problem, um, clearly.” He looks over at her. “Because when we do that—” She gestures to his bed, referring to what they were doing moments before. “I feel like I’m ready now, but when I think about it, like actually think about it, I know I’m not. I’m not ready yet.”

He glances away and runs a hand through his hair before turning back to her. “Yeah, I didn’t think we were. And I didn’t think that you were even thinking about that.”

“Well. I am.”

He raises his eyebrows, and then he opens his mouth, pauses, and closes his mouth again for another moment. “Oh.”

“Because, you know, I want it to be with you.”

He stares at her blankly, all the color drained from his face.

She thinks she might have broken Ricky Bowen.

“Would you . . .” He still hasn’t moved, and she kind of wants to disappear, right here into the floor, and forget this entire evening ever happened, but she also really needs to keep talking and get this out in the air once in for all. If she really wants to do what she’s saying she does with him, shouldn’t they be able to talk about it like this? “Would you want that with me, too?"

“I—uh, yeah, I mean, yes,” he sputters. “Definitely.” He pauses and then reaches out to take her hand. “Yes, definitely.”

Her heart unclenches, and she smiles. “You said that already.”

“Well, I double mean it,” he replies with a boyish grin and squeezes her hand reassuringly. They stay like that for a moment longer before he changes the subject, “Do you want to watch a movie or something? I think my dad put leftovers in the fridge.”

She nods, relieved that this is over with, and follows him down the stairs, and they spend the rest of the night watching the Halloween remake and eating reheated lasagna from the pan.

\---

As July draws to a close, he comes over for dinner one night, and her moms order excessive amounts of Chinese takeout and they eat at the kitchen table out of the cardboard containers. They ask him about UCLA, and Nini picks at a mushroom with her chopsticks.

“Move-in is August 23,” he says, measured, as he spares a glance at her, but she keeps her eyes on her plate. “And, um, my mom and Todd are going to fly out to help me move in and stuff.” She looks up. She didn’t know that.

“Oh, that’ll be good. If you have half as much stuff as Nini, you’ll need as many hands as you can get,” her mom says, laughing at her own joke. Nini gives her mom a tight-lipped smile and shoves another bite in her mouth.

\---

August arrives, and she can’t put off her list any longer.

She spends the day with her moms, picking out bedding and supplies for communal bathrooms (shower caddy, shower shoes, the works), among all the other items Target deems essential. Since they’ll be flying out to Boston with mostly suitcases, everything else will be ordered for pickup on move-in day.

She begins sorting her clothes by what’s coming and what’s staying. Her list of required books comes in an email, and she places an order with the bookstore, wincing at the total price tag for renting used books, but confirms the order anyway. She sends Lara a few different options for rugs for their room, and they agree on the fluffy lilac one.

After months of avoidance, her to-dos are checked off faster than she had anticipated.

Before bed, she flips through the glossy Berklee College of Music catalogues that she’s collected over the last two years and tries to picture herself among the racially diverse groups of students wearing a suspicious amount of Berklee merch. Walking the streets of Boston to their next class, sitting on one of the bean bags in the student lounges, eating in the dining hall.

She tries to picture FaceTime dates with Ricky, three hours behind in California, not seeing one another until Thanksgiving Break, missing someone so much that it hurts. That’s a lot easier to picture.

\---

He’s in his room, and his dad is downstairs, letting her in.

“Thanks, Mr. Bowen,” she says over her shoulder before taking the stairs two at a time. The door is open, so she sees him sitting on his bed, looking at his laptop. She knocks lightly on the doorframe, so he’ll look up from the screen.

He cocks his head to the side when he sees her. “Hey.” He closes his computer and sets it on his bedside table. “I didn’t know that you were coming over.”

“Hi,” she says and takes a step inside his room. A few posters and pictures, including the one of their group from senior prom, have been taken down, and there’s a half-filled cardboard box sitting by his closet. “Yeah. I thought we should probably talk.”

“Talk,” he says, the word sounding heavy coming from his mouth. He sits up straight and moves over a bit, so she can sit next to him on the bed, but she takes a spot in his desk chair instead, facing him. “Yeah. We probably should.”

“So,” she says, and she takes a deep breath. Her chest feels tight, her lungs constricting as she tries to breathe, tries to get out what she needs to say next. “We leave in two weeks.”

“We do,” he agrees.

“What happens next?” she asks.

It feels like she just dropped an anvil on a cartoon road runner the way that he exhales at her question, his shoulders visibly deflating as he does, and he shakes his head. “I don’t know. What do you want to happen next?”

She shakes her head now. “No, I picked last time,” she tells him, thinking back to their morning in the treehouse. She picked their now. “It’s your turn.”

“Nini, we’re not picking what movie to watch next.”

“I _know_ that—”

“I can’t make a decision for us,” he continues.

Us. “I know that,” she says again and bites the bullet. “Do you—should we break up?”

His eyes grow wide. “Do you want to?” No, she thinks. She doesn’t say anything until he asks again, “Do you want us to break up?”

“I mean, I don’t know!” she says, her voice rising, and she feels a little shaky, like she’s vibrating at a higher frequency than she was when she got to the Bowen’s home. “It’s not that easy. Long distance is hard. Do you really want to be in college with a girlfriend on the opposite end of the world and who you can only see like, four times a year, and you’re three hours behind, and four years is a _really_ long time, and what if you end up _wanting_ to break up with me? How are we supposed to be friends after that? I don’t know if I could handle that, not being friends with you, so what if it’s just easier to make a clean break now and—”

“Okay,” he interrupts her, and he puts his hands on his knees, palms up, held out to her. She bites her lip and digs her heels into the carpet in an attempt to steady herself. “Let me talk, okay?”

She nods silently.

“You’re my best friend,” he says, his eyes bright, and she wants to take his hands in hers. She sits on her fingers instead. “You’re my favorite person that I know, and I love that you care so much about your friends and your moms and music and that you can write a song about a dog that you saw wearing a sweater, and I love that I have to work really hard to make you laugh sometimes. And I know that I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next four years, but I know that you’re my best friend. I know that you’re the first and last person I want to talk to every day, and I know that I want this—” He gestures to the both of them. “To keep going, that I want this feeling to keep going, because I’m not ready for us—for this to be over.” He pauses and then says the next part as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “And I know that I love you.”

She blinks, and a tear rolls down her cheek, but she’s not even sure when she started to cry. She just knows that Ricky Bowen loves her.

His eyes widen when he sees her tears. “Wait, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry—”

She closes the space between them to kiss him, cutting him off mid-sentence, and when she pulls away, she keeps his hand on his cheek. He keeps his eyes shut tight. “I love you, too,” she whispers.

\---

They make a new list together of how they’ll work long distance, planning out a schedule for FaceTime dates and daily morning texts, starting with Nini on the East Coast, and goodnight texts, from Ricky on the West Coast.

He gives her a UCLA sweatshirt to add to her collection of hoodies that she’s pawned from him over the years, and he keeps the SLC Pride T-shirt that he picked up from her mom when he spilled orange juice on himself one afternoon at her house.

She packs a stack of photos of them over the years—the first day of second grade outside Ms. Wolff’s class, Halloween 2010, senior prom, one of the pictures that her mom took after graduation—to be a part of the her new photo wall in her dorm, and he takes the photo from graduation for his room, too.

She’s realistic enough to understand that heartfelt declarations don’t erase any of the legitimate concerns that she has or that he has about what’s to come, but she also knows that she’s never felt the way she feels about Ricky about anyone else. And knowing that, after thirteen years, her best friend and the boy she loves feels that way too, seems like enough of a reason to try.

Since she leaves for school first, he comes with her and her moms to the airport, and she cries a little when hugging him goodbye, but it’s okay, because his eyes are a little glassy, too.

“I love you,” she whispers, and he says it back, brushing his fingers against her knuckles before intertwining their hands completely.

Her moms look away, and she kisses him one last time, tilting her head back, and she tries to hold onto the feeling as long as she can, knowing that if she’s lucky, she’ll be able to hold onto this feeling for forever.


End file.
